Tuesday, May 1, 2007

Once More, with Feeling

Let’s start with some nice things about Dirk.

First, the bad news: on offense, he’s at 20.0 pts and 2.3 assists per game, on 40.9% shooting. To get those up to his season average tonight, he’d have to score 43 on 18/24 FG and 8 assists. That’s a stretch.

On the other hand, his defensive numbers have been really good: 11.5 rebounds, 2.5 steals, 1.8 blocks. That’s up from 8.9, 0.7, and 0.8. Overall, if you just add up his stats (points + rebounds + assists + steals + blocks), Dirk is down about 0.3, from 38.4 in the regular season to 38.1 in the playoffs.

So what I see is a frustrated guy who’s getting flustered on offense, but is making up some of it on defense.

But my brother Jeremy raised what seems like a fair question: Has there ever before been a guy whose entire career was riding on a single game?